For as long as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been around, there have been cheats. Though, their prevalence has fluctuated over the years, impacted by occasional ban waves that stop a small population of cheaters dead in their tracks, and make others think twice about taking the risk.
But there have been plenty of cheaters who have been able to compromise the competitive nature of CS: GO without facing any consequences, using cheats for years at a time, even accumulating a library of games and DLC on their accounts. Many of these cheaters have used Linux as their operating system of choice due to how CS: GO previously had no method for reading its memory allocation to detect cheats.
That changed today with what was one of most impactful anti-cheat upgrades in the history of the game, all thanks to Valve.
A user on Reddit by the name of GivePLZ-DoritosChip wrote a detailed overview of the new anti-cheat method, explaining:
“You could install a free hack and never get a ban unless Overwatch convicted you, the major cheat (which I can’t name but everyone knows) just got hit with bans for the first time in 3-ish years.”
He went on to calculate the value of the CS: GO skins on accounts who were affected. One such user had roughly $771 worth of weapon skins alone, with a rare Karambit knife among other valuable goods.
The user is now permanently VAC banned, preventing the user from playing online in any official Valve games.
This is a huge win for Valve who has has previously faced scrutiny from the CS: GO community for being slow to address cheating in the game. In five years only a small number of ban waves have been issued, with no major upgrades to the anti-cheat software itself. In-fact, the biggest moment arrived last Summer when Valve added Prime Matchmaking to the game, but even that has its flaws.
This could have implications for the eSports side of CS: GO, where cheaters have been caught in the past, and it is rumored that several notable professional players still use cheats.
